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Personalized and precision medicine initiatives explicitly call for researchers to treat research participants as partners. One way to realize that goal is by returning individual research results to participants. I propose a number of concrete steps that could facilitate that process.
The study of the genetic basis of neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases has progressed through recent large-scale association studies as well as the application of a range of high-throughput molecular methods. In this Review, the authors examine systems biology approaches and demonstrate how gene networks provide an organizing framework to integrate the analysis of large-scale genetic and molecular profiling data sets to characterize the genetic basis of phenotypes that affect the central nervous system.
The emergence of drug resistance is a major challenge for controlling diverse infectious diseases and cancer. In this Review, the authors discuss the mechanisms and evolutionary consequences of drug resistance. They highlight commonalities and distinctions across diverse pathogens and systems, and the implications for optimizing the current use and future development of drug therapies.
The extent of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is now becoming apparent. In this Review, the authors describe the mechanisms of HGT using examples from recent findings of HGT between prokaryotes and eukaryotes (including the human microbiome), and also between multicellular eukaryotes. They further describe the acquisition of novel traits via HGT in an evolutionary context.
Robustness of a phenotypic trait is characterized as lack of, or low, variance in that phenotype under a particular genetic or environmental perturbation. The authors review recent studies characterizing robustness, provide guidance in reporting robust features and insights into how variation propagates across biological systems.
